In A History of Global Consumption: 1500 – 1800, Ina Baghdiantz McCabe examines the history of consumption throughout the early modern period using a combination of chronological and thematic discussion, taking a comprehensive and wide-reaching view of a subject that has long been on the historical agenda. The title explores the topic from the rise of the collector in Renaissance Europe to the birth of consumption as a political tool in the eighteenth century.
Beginning with an overview of the history of consumption and the major theorists, such as Bourdieu, Elias and Barthes, who have shaped its development as a field, Baghdiantz McCabe approaches the subject through a clear chronological framework. Supplemented by illlustrations in every chapter and ranging in scope from an analysis of the success of American commodities such as tobacco, sugar and chocolate in Europe and Asia to a discussion of the Dutch tulip mania, A History of Global Consumption: 1500 – 1800 is the perfect guide for all students interested in the social, cultural and economic history of the early modern period.
Biography
Professor of History and the Darakjian and Jafarian Chair of Armenian History at Tufts University, USA. Her publications include The Shah’s Silk for Europe’s Silver: The Eurasian Silk trade of the Julfan Armenians in Safavid Iran and India, 1590–1750 (1999), Diaspora and Entrepreneurial Networks 1600–2000, co-editor (2005) and Orientalism in Early Modern France: Eurasian Trade, Exoticism and the Ancien Régime (2008).
‘Baghdiantz McCabe’s work advances a nuanced and incredibly important argument about how consumption structured a new cultural power dynamic, by bringing it into dialogue with the booming field of world history. This is a book, and an argument, with real importance for the intersections of culture, power, and global commerce in our own time, and should be of great use to introductory, intermediate, and advanced undergraduates.’
Dr Eli Rubin, Western Michigan University, USA'Approaching her subject through a clear chronological framework, Baghdiantz McCabe shows that consumption was not merely a dependent variable in...broad[er] evolution but in some significant instances an independent variable capable of powering its own significant social and economic consequences...this book will be of use to those interested in the social and economic history of the early modern period. Summing Up: Recommended. Lower-division undergraduates and above.'
J. Murdock, University of Missouri--Columbia, USA in CHOICE
